Information storage and retrieval systems

Abstract

Today's geologist has become accustomed to frequently finding himself in the position of having more information available for study than he could possibly assimilate in the time allocated to him. This has led the geologist to the use of modern computing equipment as a means of reducing the tremendous quantity of data to those items and factors which are pertinent to the problem at hand. Much has been learned during the past decade concerning the design of an information storage and retrieval system that can effectively manipulate geological data. It is the intent of this paper to review some of the more challenging problems which have confronted the geologist desiring to make use of modern computing techniques, and to delineate some of the solutions to these problems which have been discovered by the geologists and programmers. The problem of storing large quantities of data in a computer system that will allow efficient retrieval is threefold. The first part of the problem concerns data encoding; the second part of the problem concerns what is called file structure and the third part of the problem involves retrieval techniques.